Are you losing your private medical practice
because you
can’t earn enough to keep it open? If so, it’s because
you have never
had a formal business education! “They”
taught you how to practice medicine, but not how
to run a business
let alone a
profitable one.

We are talking about OFFENSIVE actions,
not Defensive actions.

You learn these simple business lessons and advice
on
this site!

Article #65 - May. 2015

“How
to find an extra million
dollars
in your medical practice business”

There will be follow-up… increased follow-up… and
excessive
degrees
of follow-up in my medical practice.

The greatest mistake being made today in all businesses,
especially in medical practice businesses, is the
failure to follow-up on every opportunity to capitalize
on each and
every contact with your medical office.

Misguided by lack of a business education, most
physicians find it difficult to believe that close
follow-up on potential new patients is a waste of time…
even worse, not profitable.

Literally hundreds of studies have
documented the
profitability of a regimented follow-up program for
leads for recruiting clients, patients, and customers.
For any physician to accept and implement such a program
in their practice business requires the use of another
principle that all physicians know quite well… the
practice of evidence
based medicine.

If it’s evidence based, then it must
be something
worth strong consideration, not a casual glance and
ignored. Logically, any physician that accepts evidence
based medicine as the highest standard of medical care,
then it should not be difficult for them to accept other
evidence based business
facts and studies amassed under
the same rigid compliance.

Physicians that use the results of
evidence-based
medicine don’t go back and read the full medical
literature
on a topic before applying it to their
medical practice. Neither do smart businesspersons have
to confirm for themselves
that business-marketing
studies are legitimate before accepting and
applying
them.

Business owners need to plug the holes in their
buckets

The biggest hole in the financial bucket
found most
often
in private medical practice is the nearly
universal finding that follow-up is essentially absent.
Patients see your yellow-page ad, your office signs,
find your site online, visit your place of business, ask
your receptionist or staff questions, and
that’s it.

There’s no capture of the prospects
name, physical
address, email address, nor any effort to provide them
more information, a free report, a discount coupon for
something, and which you can use to maintain some
interaction with the person. The waste is criminal. Do
you permit such waste to
go on in your practice
business?

You don’t just pay for the patients you gain
through your advertising and marketing. You pay a price
for every call, every walk-in and other patient contact.
Doing nothing with
a potential patient is like flushing
money down the toilet.
Say you invest $1,000 in an ad
campaign and you get 50
phone calls.

You bought each
call for $20. If you ignore one call completely you have
intentionally thrown away $20. That
may not impress you
but those of us who were from poor families know what it
would feel like to stand over a paper basket and slowly
tear a $20 bill into tiny pieces.

The business lesson here is clear.
When you fail to
thoroughly follow-up on a lead or customer or patient,
you
are intentionally sabotaging the financial security
of your practice business. You know what a smart
business person needs to do and you don’t do it.

Could you use an extra million bucks?

If in doubt, ask your wife
and kids about it. The
extra million is hidden inside your business. It’s in
the follow-up
that isn’t happening.

Very often slothful business
owners look at only
the small profitability of their marketing activities…
spend $1,000 to
get 50 calls, convert only 5 to
appointments, and acquire
only 2 as customers, but are
worth $1,000 each in income
for your practice. Small
thinkers are happy with that.

The other side of the situation
shows 45 that
didn’t turn into appointments. The total reality is far
worse than that. If, with aggressive and diligent
follow-up of the 45, another 5 appointments and 2
customers could be had with some effort being made to
get them, instead of being lost out the hole in your
bucket.

Even better, if each new patient
referred one new
patient, an endless chain of new patient referrals could
be had. And, the potential waste to your practice income
is increased to $10,900 that you could have had. Let
that happen once a month and $109,000.00 slips out the
hole in the bucket onto the floor.

In the experience of most business
and marketing
consultants, over a ten year period of any small
business
there is at least one million dollars in lost
money to be had.
It’s not hidden money, just money that
is never recognized
as being available… call it the
value of every physician having some business and
marketing knowledge to begin with.

Where are some of the holes in your financial bucket
through which your money leaks?

The person who calls you and asks questions, stays
unknown, and
gets no follow-up… a widespread
infection found
throughout medical practices today.

No significant follow-up on leads obtained at
conventions, trade
shows, or consumer shows…
vendors are still ignorant
about the financial
advantages of good follow-up.

Patient referrals with no follow-up… the forgotten
value of saying “thank you for referring ______”.

Lack of instant follow-up to new patients… lack of
making any new patient feel welcome, important,
thanked,
brought back.

No prevention of, or rescue attempts made to regain
lost patients… interestingly, 30 years of surveys
have consistently revealed “indifference by
provider”
as, by far, the #1 reason patients leave a
medical practice… not because of incompetence,
negligence,
insult, lower
fees, etc.

What are good follow-up processes for
physicians to use?

There are hundreds of templates and variations of the
follow-up processes used in small businesses. For
medical practices the usual commercial business methods
for
follow-up have to be modified to avoid liability,
misinterpretations, revealing private medical
information, while maintaining rapport and
relationships.

The follow-up procedures we are
discussing today
are
those related to your efforts to increase your
patient flow, recruit new patients, and increase your
medical practice income. In most cases your intention is
to magnify
the
results and efficiency of your efforts.

The problem is that doctors are not
familiar with
many
of the commonly used methods that commercial
businesses
use to increase profits which are the same
ones, done for the same reasons, and create the same
results every physician
in private medical practice
seeks.

Doctors and other professionals tend
to either be
ignorant of or never recognize the exceptional
profit-potential of marketing to their practices, even
though they experience every day of their lives examples
of the marketing process directly influencing the
decisions of people in
remarkable ways.

Proven advantages that good follow-up offers
for
maintenance
of your medical practice…

Securing the contact information
of every individual that calls your office provides
the opportunity and permission for you to directly
interact with that person
in the future.

The real
value stems from the fact that the person
that
called your office felt that your responses to their
needs would help them. You already had credibility
in
the eyes of the
potential patient.

Secondly, the fact that the
person took action
and called your
office to begin with tells you that they have
a need
and are ready to make a decision about who
they want
to fill that need.

Every personal phone call from a
new potential
patient is often disguised by asking
for information,
while the real reason for the call
is to get a sense about whether to go ahead and make
an appointment
with you.

That decision is made only after
seeing the way
your office responds to their inquiry. Were they put
on hold
for 15 minutes? Was the staffer helpful,
courteous,
friendly and not in a hurry? Was there a
sense that the staffer cared about helping the
potential patient with
their problem?

If the office person took the time
to get the
caller’s contact information, then it implies that
the caller is important to them right from the
start. Teach your
office staff to answer the phone
with the attitude that every call is a new potential
patient needing an appointment. The mental
“positioning” allows for a
much more friendly
response by the staffer than it
might otherwise be.

The patient has opened the door
for you to communicate with them in unlimited ways.
The amount
of contact information you require is
critical to avoid offending a new patient.

Most new patients are used to
providing their
full
name, home address, and phone number. When you
ask for more information at the time of the first
contact
it can offend the person for privacy
reasons. “Why do
you need all
that info?”

Studies have shown that the best
response on
first contact is to
get the minimum contact information…
full name and
physical address. Other more extensive information
can be easily obtained with much less resistance on
the next office visit, because there has already
been a bit of trust established on the
first
contact.

Today the cell phone number and
email address
are usual correspondence methods. After obtaining
the
initial contact information and more information
is
needed, there’s a pleasant means to obtain
additional information without offending the new
patient.

Psychological research by Dr.
Cialdini has
demonstrated that a person is much more likely to
respond positively when asked for a favor or to do
something for someone if they are given a reason for
doing it by the person asking for the favor. The
reason “content” seems irrelevant to the person’s
willingness
to comply.

All a staff member needs to do
is give the
person a reason why they are asking for additional
data. “We
find that most of our patients use email.
If you have
an email address and would like to
provide it, we can
get your test results to you
faster than by phone.”

Follow-up is an open door. One
fact about
relationships you want to build requires that there
be
a frequent communication or interaction. Like
everyone, over time we forget things. Patients
forget appointments, annual check-ups, and the last
time
they were seen.

Maintenance of your presence
in the minds of
your patients over time increases loyalty, trust,
referrals
and retention of patients. You
do that by sending
holiday greetings, birthday
cards, reminders of appointments, and even
celebrations you have planned
for patients.

My OBG friend has a large all-day
party for all
his
IVF patients
once a year… for celebration of successful outcomes
and for promotion of his practice. Anytime
you thank
a patient, your PR rate goes
up 400%.

Another follow-up variation is
to announce what
you are doing in your medical practice. Patients
want to
know that you are keeping-up with your
specialty and skills, even expanding those.

Send
your patients a note telling them about the big
meetings you attend, about the new training you have
done in learning a new skill and what it now offers
to
your patients. Tell them about any recognition
you have received during the year… like sponsoring a
kids
baseball team.

There are two critical circumstances when most private
practice physicians benefit tremendously by knowing the
value and importance of follow-up tactics.

When a physician is starting a new medical practice
or starting a medical practice over again at a new
location

When a physician’s medical practice is failing to
show increased income over 4 to 6 months, whenever
that is recognized, and failing
to maintain the usual flow of medical patients (the
number of new patients coming in are far less than
the numbers leaving
your practice).

These are the most unrecognized and
practice-
threatening problems that we see today. Issues
such as
these account for about 85% of medical practice
failures. Several factors come into play that reflect on
why this is happening much more often today.

Physicians don’t really know how to measure how
their practice is doing. Most consider it a waste of
time to
try to keep track of their flow of patients.
When they
don’t use a routine set of measurements,
they have no
way of knowing when their practice is
going downhill
early enough to do anything about it.

Physicians never learn that there’s a lot more to
detecting problems with their practice business than
relying on their monthly CPA statements. Since
physicians never receive any business education,
they don’t know what to look for nor how to prevent
common business and financial problems if they
happen to
find one.

Medical educators have crippled physicians in two
ways. The never tell medical students about what an
academic business education can do for their careers
in medicine. So students believe that business
knowledge
is useless.

They refuse to provide a business education for
all
medical students which means they prefer to
produce physicians that will fail
in medical practice, for financial reasons, than
educate physicians in business while in medical
school and who will not fail in medical practice
because they know how to run a successful business.

The evidence and facts available today clearly show
that such a business education can be implemented
into the normal medical curriculum with all the
advantages associated with doing it.

Medical doctors with a business education have the
tools to use to prevent medical practice business
failure.

Now, about the value of follow-up
in any business,
why
the process is used in every successful business
entity, and why physicians prefer to remain ignorant
about it while the rest of the world knows the truth.

The purpose of follow-up on any
business is an
efficient means of establishing a connection with the
medical patients who for some reason or other fall
through the cracks using ordinary marketing techniques.
You know how that works.
You send out a thousand
postcards that you buy from a list broker to a list of
new arrivals in town. Everybody needs a
doctor, right?

The card is a “welcome to town” greeting and
contains
your desire to take care of their family, your
office contact data, and maybe a small map on the
backside showing how
to locate your office. Most will
throw the card away.

A few will file the card away for
later reference. If you’re the first doctor to send them
your gentle invitation for care and they happen to need
a doctor right then, some will call your office for
information, and often become a
new patient.

Out of the 1,000 postcards, you may get 5 or 10
responses and two new patients. That’s about average
numbers. If you sent 10,000 postcards out to the
category
of potential patients you like to treat, then
the new patient figures increase proportionally.

If you
did that same thing for each of the three months before
you opened your new medical office, you’d have a
head
start on recruiting new patients.

What happened to the 9,800 potential
patients that
never responded. It’s not uncommon for most sloppy
businesses to forget the non-responders.

Marketing
research has confirmed that there are a significant
number of those 9,800 non-responders will
respond at the
right time and for the right reasons if
contacts with
them are repeated a number of times. You
know examples
of how well it works.

Why else would a company pay for TV
time over and
over again showing the same ad or commercial? Why would
some company pay to place the same magazine ad in a
magazine every month sometimes for several years? They
must work, otherwise they’d be losing money.

Potential patients are out there, forgot
what
doctor sent them a greeting, and are waiting for your
next postcard to remind them. The next time you send the
postcard the potential patient may have just dumped his
previous doctor and happens to be looking for a new
doctor.

After seeing your name and office
greeting
repeatedly
over time, it becomes familiar to the person.
They might
not need a doctor right then themselves but
may refer their friend of neighbor to that doctor.

By maintaining repeated contacts with
that huge
pool of potential patients, you have a goldmine setup
for new
patients. Someone in your office can do this for
you.

My advice has always been to start your
marketing programs when you start practice and continue
them until
you quit practice.
In private practice you
are always having patients come and go in and out
of
your practice.

To build your practice you need to
always have
more patients coming in than leaving. Keep tabs on
those statistics for a year and you will have a
reasonably
good idea whether your practice is growing or
not.

Lesson:Your
medical practice should
always be growing...
never
level...
never
declining.

"Professional Probe"

Good marketing
can be persuasive in many ways. You can see the same
thing visually and in writing, but the purpose is to
move your original perception as a buyer from an
expectation (boneless chicken) to an investigation
into what are the different kinds of
boneless
chicken.

An exorbitant
amount of money is lost in medical practice as a
result of the erroneous perception that marketing is
a one-shot deal. If you don't get everything you are
after on the first try, you move on to the next
marketing effort believing that there is no value
left in the residual.

When something
seems so obvious, why would anyone take the time to
investigate further? That's where physicians go
wrong. Hidden behind all marketing efforts is a
world of
things that produce profits that doctors
are not aware of. That's why there is such a huge
benefit income-wise for physicians who are
knowledgeable enough about business to use follow-up
procedures extensively to find
the hidden gold.

Article
#65-A

"The
#1 Thing Holding
You Back
From 7-Figures"

By:
Dan Kennedy on: October 31st, 2014

Personally, I’ve never liked it.

But I realized early on, it was irrelevant whether I
liked it
or not.

The question wasn’t, “Did I like it?”

The real question was “How much money did I want to make
and how much freedom did I want?”

Kind of like dieting and exercise, the question isn’t
“do you like to exercise and eat right?” No... the real
question is do you like the alternative if you don’t
exercise and make the right food choices?

So it’s important, although again, not something I
particularly like.

What I’m about to tell you is a transcendental factor
in
income.

And if you listen to what I say, you could find yourself
making a lot more money across every communication
channel.

You see, for at least the past 30 years or so, I’ve been
teaching that the one thing that usually gets people who
are earning below six-figures or a low six-figures in
any business up into a high six-figures is the quantum
leap of shifting from being the “doer” of your thing to
the
“marketer” of your thing.

That is still true.

Shifting from being a fitness instructor to a marketer
of fitness training. Changing from being a veterinarian
to marketing veterinarian care.

Switching from a photographer to marketing photography
services, and so on, will carry you a pretty good way.

I mean, most people locked into relatively low incomes,
regardless of their level of expertise or excellence
that they deliver, are stuck there because their primary
view of their business is the doing of the thing.

The cooking of the food, the cracking of the bat, the
fixing
of the tooth, the waxing of the car, the styling
of the hair,
the – whatever. And when you shift out of
that so that
you’re actually now in the marketing of
that thing, that’s a pretty good income leap.

But truth be told, it has its limits.

It’s NOT the thing that gets you to a 7-figure income.

And it is questionable whether it will give you the
exact freedom you are seeking. Because although you are
making more money, you are also most likely still
working a lot of hours for it.

Let me show you what making the next shift can do.

I make 7-figures from copywriting alone. That is only
partially the way I make money though. I only spend 20%
of my
time writing.

Imagine making that leap in your business and only
working at your “thing” 20% of the time. How would THAT
change your life?

So here’s the thing you must do to make the next quantum
leap.
(Tweet
this!)

As I mentioned, personally it is a thing I never really
liked, but I do it because the alternative is worse. So
this really is pretty important.

You must shift from focusing on being the “marketer of
your thing” to focusing on “the status of the individual
providing the thing.”

Because even when you are the marketer of your thing,
the focus is still on the thing, not on the greatest
possible point
of differentiation, which is the status
of the individual providing the thing.

Increasingly all other options for differentiation are
becoming harder and harder to use and sustain. But one
thing that will always make you different is who you
are.

The easiest place to look for examples of this is with
celebrities and professional athletes.

There are professional football players who make a good
six-figure income. They are elite athletes who reach an
income level that many never will. But, unless you are a
diehard fan, you likely wouldn’t recognize their name
even
if they offer big contributions to the team.

As an example, NFL player Ryan Taylor is probably a name
you aren’t familiar with. You probably don’t even know
what team he plays for, but he makes a solid 6-figure
income and
is in his 4th year playing professional
football.

In comparison, Johnny Manziel better known as Johnny
Football is in his rookie season. He has less experience
than Ryan Taylor, yet Manziel makes $2 million a year
not including endorsement deals. You probably also
recognize
the name Johnny Manziel or at least have heard
the name Johnny Football even if you aren’t a fan.

The big difference is that Manziel knows how to market
his personal brand. That, more than his ability or
experience,
has put money in his pocket.

For instance earlier this year, prior to knowing whether
or
not Manziel would be a boom or a bust in the NFL,
Nike
signed him to the largest endorsement deal from
this year’s NFL rookie class. It had nothing to do with
experience or
even how well he plays.

So if you want to join the 7-Figure club, then you’ll
have
to get out of the business of marketing your thing
and get
into the business of marketing you, even if you
dislike
doing it as much as I do.

Join Me here....

In Every Issue:

My desire is to always offer you the
business and
marketing strategies that you will need if you ever wish
to reach your maximum potential in the practice of
medicine whether you are employed or in private practice.

My New Book

"The Wounded Physician
Project"

The average medical doctor in the US
practices medicine
for 12,617 days and leaves a million dollars on the table during that time.

They never are able recognize that it was available to them during all those
years because they lack a business education.

This book is unique because no other author
has ever
written about the primary cause and solution to today's increasing attrition
of physicians and the demise of private medical practice.

Once the reader becomes exposed to the extreme and relentless series of
strategic moves organized and implemented by our government to control
healthcare, the reader will understand why all physicians must be provided
with an academic
business education.

Secondly, the reader will discover the
critical
importance and practical value of a business education for practicing
physicians. Today, most physicians struggle
financially while running their medical practice business because of their
reliability on their own
business ignorance.

The contents discuss all the benefits and advantages of business knowledge,
how to get it and use it, and quickly reverse the money crunch you are
experiencing today.

You probably won't get much benefit from
an MBA degree
because it's not oriented to medical practice business that demands special
knowledge, implementation, and decisions.
The success principles of all businesses are the same, but the management
of those business strategies have to match the passions, objectives, and
diligence capabilities of each physician.

The content is meant not only to inspire
physicians to
gain business knowledge, but also to get a very clear understanding about
how fragile their medical career is to present day economic, political, and
social threats.

The ultimate goal of all
medical
doctors should be to use their business knowledge as a offensive weapon
against predators, both economic and governmental, to survive and grow using
the business tools I continue to throw at you. It's the only offensive force
that physicians have to use to remain in private practice.

I truly believe this is the
one and
only solution for maintaining solo medical practice. This is especially
critical to the most popular option---cash only practice---for practicing
medicine outside the government healthcare system.

Order the book today--

Available through your local bookstore's order desk or
at these online bookstores...

Amazon .com

Barnesandnoble.com

Xlibris.com or
by phone 1-888-795-4274 x 7879

I guarantee that it will stick to
your hands and mind for as long as you practice
medicine.

Show
the world what you are capabable of doing

Profitable Practice Tips

1. New approach to post op recovery
from surgery---so they think. (WSJ --3-31-15)

Supposedly
the new approach used over the last 15 years in Europe
is catching on here in USA.
Patients post op are now off iv's fast, ambulated
rapidly, decreased narcotics for pain, and go home
1 or 2 days sooner.

What is so
interesting to me is that I did all these things on all
my post op OBG patients for over 20 years in private
practice even when my associates though I was nuts. I
also ordered a regular diet as soon as the patient could
tolerate it---never had to regret doing that.

A general
surgeon taught me to do all that--thank God.

2.
Practice Fusion, a new startup. Provides software to
doctors to implement into their office systems. It
automatically flags when a patient is due for some form
of immunization. Studies show 85% increase in doctor
services and charges from using the software.

Problem is it is so
expensive that most physicians in private practice will
not be able to
afford it.

Borderless Humor

"Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest
woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her
sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement."

---Mark Twain
;

Inspiration Time

"It doesn't matter
where you're coming from. It only matters where you are
going."

---Brian
Tracy

Views I Only Share With My Friends--

What my medical career taught me...
Click Here...
and how it can help you manage your medical practice
business at the highest level of expertise.

Facts And Stats
You Should Know

1. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in
their hair.

2.
The Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 caused more death and
illness than the disease it was intended to prevent.

What Your Kids
Are Capable Of…

Insist on and help your kids to become assets...
When you want to understandwhat your modern day kids are
capable of and
have the ability to do, regarding starting a
business of their own, then hit the link below and give
yourself a dose
of inspirational enlightenment...

Teach your kids these things…
--business
principles,
--money-management,--creative thinking,--entrepreneurship,--self-discipline,--integrity,--decision making,--independence,--kindness,--respect,--truthfulness,--humility,--goal setting,--faith in God,
and
the power of money

New Important
Notices

Protect
your practice using the strategies in this eBook,which contains the keys to your
medical practice survival. "How To Rapidly Propel Your Medical Practice Income To
Unlimited Levels In 6 Months"